Well gang, I am humbled, honored and pleased as punch at the overwhelming success of our December round of fundraising to work on the database end of the mudcat upgrade. While I just hoped for a few bucks to keep us plugging thru the (seemingly endless) cold winter months of central Pennsylvania, we actually got halfway to our total programmatic budgets extending thru the summer.

To date, the specialists and I have a fully functional opensource database slave in operation. At this juncture it is passively (attempting) mirroring our production server, serving as a backup and testing to make sure it accepts, stores and redelivers the data (in all it's infinite international diversity of crazy characters, encoding format, html tags, sanskrit... and spaw's posts). Incidentally, we will soon be sending out a request to verify your membership email addresses, update your passwords and I know of a few of you who may have to change your usernames slightly due to strange characters. More on this later...

Living in a college town and therefore using a lot of college staff as helpers, the summer is where we need to get the bulk of our programming done. While I am not hiring students, their absence affords us the time to invest outside our usual semester load.

Our third and final phase is planned for fall and will be for hardware to create basically 2 exact servers for redundant fail-over. That is to say, no more "mudcat is down" stuff.

So here I am with hat in hand once again requesting you to dig deep and give what you can to keep us going. All the same is still the case in how's and where's which you can find below.

Thanks all, having a ball with the work and I'll have more info coming soon.

Keeping this short, the best way to contribute in via Paypal. They have been very good to us over the years, cut us a break on their cut cuz we're awesome and allow us to accept any sort of currencies without conversion/transfer/banking fees. The account is max@mudcat.org which you can enter manually or by clicking the following links and buttons:

USD:

GBP:

EUR:

AUD:

CAD:

If you need to, you can also mail checks or money orders in US currency, ***made out to Max Spiegel*** to:

Max Spiegel The Mudcat Cafe PO Box 274 State College, PA 16804

In the UK, the kind kind folks knows as The (UK) Friends of Mudcat can help, hopefully posting below the information you will need to see that the funds are directed such that we can avoid the banking fees usually associated with international bank transfers.

The big upside is that once the upgrade is complete, mudcat.org will be completely sustainable on non-member ad clicks. Huuurrrrraaaaayyy! No more ads for members, and God willing, no more of my pesky contribution requests (read: begging). Also, until then, please take this as a reminder that clicking our ads is an extremely important/effective source of revenue for mudcat.org.

I CAN be first with the following: So, how much do you actually need? How much did you need last time, and how much did you get? Why? Will you be posting a detailed list of what you used the money for? Are you wearing tighty-whities, shorts, a G-string or none of the above? If you have 6.7 oranges and 3.178 kumquats and put the bananas on a train traveling west at 65 MPH, what color is an invisible dirigible?

Got about seven grand since December, need another eight for summer and ten more come fall... plus the five we need to get thru any year tho the ads are covering that nowa days. Money is for labor mostly, myself and those much smarter than I, hardware, cloud space for backup, and if we get enough, a redundant internet connection. I'm really trying hard to create a sustainable model here, really doing things the right way, no band-aids, hacks or put off something for another day or we'll regret later. I may call on several uber-specialists as we come across different issues.

Like the traditions stored within, mudcat's great substance is that we've stood the test of time in a world where giants have come and gone. I'm vested. You build something that gets 17 years in and a guy, this guy, gets to feel like its worth his time to build something that could last forever. I suppose in other trade terms I could say that I'm trying to put a copper roof on the old shack. They last 100 years.

I'd be more than happy to do what i did previously and put all four of my CDs in the auction. Gnu was wonderful in helping out with that, but the only issue that I have is shipping overseas or to Canada (Gnu: you got lucky) since the USPS international postal rates doubled last month. So check out the auction, folks.

Max, You and Joe and all the Joe-clones and all the rest of the entire Mudcat community are amazing. I don't post much anymore, but I lurk from time to time and use the DT more than ever. That is worth at least what I send NPR every year, so I've added the Mudcat to my list of "pledges."

Will be giving what I can, when I can. Mudcat has enabled myself & my Wife, Ann to have the greatest group of Friends a Family could ever wish for. A very sincere thank you to Max & the Team who are doing all these clever things on our behalf. Nigel & Ann Paterson.

open mike- ALL of the proceeds from Deb C's cd set auction goes to Mudcat, . There will be postage charges, but she has said in the auction that downloads are a viable alternative for those who'd prefer to save postage.

The postage issue concerns international bidders only. Folks in the USA will get CDs. If any folks OUTSIDE of the USA are the winning bidders then they can either a)foot the bill for postage of CDs or b) I'll offer digital downloads.

International postage for four CDs to Europe is over $25. Canada is about $20. US postage is about $3.50 .

But have you done it since the rate increase? Those went into effect in January 2013. Well, it's still going to be expensive for four CDs Internationally even without cases. Thus the downloads, and those would be CD quality (AIFF or WAV).

Folks, I'm sad to report that as overwhelmingly successful as the December fundraiser was, Phase II is equally as underwhelming.

As you may know, I am employed by a University. The programmers, monkeys and specialists I am in a position to use are also employees of this particular institution that happens to be 2 weeks away from the summer break. Now, while the students get the summer off, our workload is merely lightened by their absence (not to mention 3/4 of us are single parents who's monkeys will be wanting to play in the sunshine and such).

The point is, that it is imperative that we make the most of this 119 days of summer break to complete the bulk of programming. If we can't get at least a running prototype, I don't know when I'll have the resources to finish what we started. I fear the worst, that I'll have a mess, figuratively and literally on my hands and in my house, and all this effort will go to waste.

Ranger1 is the winner of the CDs. The auction is another way to raise money for the Mudcat. I am not sure why more folks weren't bidding, even if you weren't that into the music CDs still make wonderful gifts.

My music is my currency and really the only way I can help, but if folks aren't going to bid in the auctions, then maybe I am missing something?

Perhaps I should try this with only one CD?

$55 dollars on it's way to you, Max from Ranger1. I am so sorry it's not more.

There was an overage from the Art Thieme computer contributions, largely because of Best Buy's goofy online order system. After two days of waiting for an order to be confirmed I cancelled and called in my order - and found that his computer had gone on sale for $100 less that my first order. The original overage and the Best Buy windfall are headed Max's way as soon as it clears from my bank to PayPal.

I am gonna do sommat I never did before. I sent direct donations years ago of (at that time) significance. I won auctions with crazy bids, only to give the item to the bidder that I knew REALLY wanted it. I entered auctions and said "I'll pay $X if you send me the CDs or whatever today and keep the auction open as advertised." I have proposed CRAZY auction "items" that many people couldn't even unerstand and they flopped (gnu crazy? Noooo? Really? >;-) WTF?)

I am gonna send Max $5 cash. No shit!... I really am gonna do it. Call me a dumb animal but I am gonna do it.

Gargoyle, the contributions of 20 people to provide a computer that will help Art and get him back online don't diminish what is donated to Mudcat. And everyone agreed that if there was extra it would go to the 'cat. There is extra and that will be sent later this week.

gnu, it isn't easy to exchamge foreign currency at banks in the US. They charge extra fees for it and it usually eats up a huge amount of the currency. I think they do this on purpose to discourage anyone trying. It's more work than its worth if you send Canadian currency, unless he has someone who will cash it out at par (maybe someone who would take it back to Canada when they go.) If he lived near the border there would probably be businesses that would do it.

SRS (and everyone else who is following the fast paced and riveting story of the $5 I am gonna send to Max right away in hopes that Mudcat can continue to be such a valuable resource for the masses and, in my case, some might say, asses)... I am 99% sure delivery to Her Majesty's Roaly Canuck Postal Services, those fearless guys and gals who brave the elements... well unless it's really bad out... will be effected no later than tomorrow... sometime. Stay tuned for the final episode of the story tomorrow... I hope.

SRS, by law only Federal Reserve banks may deal in foreign currency. This means that a bank in Muleshoe, TX, would have to send the foreign money to a FR bank for exchange. This is expensive and a nuisance.

Many merchants along the Canada-U.S. border on both sides will take currency of either country, since shoppers go both ways and they aren't faced with the bank problem.

Ya done good sg. Congrats. Yer lucky the auction closes at such a piss poor time of day fer the vast majority of potential bidders and, thereby, most "detrementally importantly", fer Mudcat. Otherwise, ya would had ta bid a lot higher... and Mudcat woulda made a lot more money.

And payment sent from Scotland. Because, despite all the usual suspects and their interminable bitching and waffling, despite the trolls and flamers, despite the fact that I am at heart a rock'n'roller, jazzy souler this is still a great site and I am eternally grateful for the cyber friends I have since arriving here many years ago. Go 'Cat Go! Charlie

For once a regular drop in spammer (a the man of no words and just now deleted) found a useful thread. Someone recently asked me about how to make a donation to Mudcat. The post at the top has that information for PayPal, for donating in US dollars via check, and I think there were some UK folks willing to act as go-betweens. I haven't read the entire thread, just scanned it, but check first to see if anyone who offered back then is still able to help.